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PAPERS ON SCHOOL ISSUES OF THE DAY. XIII. 



UNIVERSITY 



AND — 



SCHOOI EXTEISIM. 






BY— 



v i W. T. HAERIS, 

Washington, D. O. 

A Paper read before the National Educational Associa- 
tion, at St. Paul, Minn., July, 1890. 




SYRACUSE, N. Y. : 

C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHEK. 

180H. 



id 



■W 



-THE SCHOOL BULLETIN PUBLICATIONS.- 



Instruction in Citizenship. 

1. Civil Government for Common Schools, prepared as a manual for 
public instruction in the State of New York. To which are appended the 
Constitution of the State of New York as amended at the election of 1882, 
the Constitution of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence; 
etc., etc. By Henry C. Northam. 16mo, cloth, pp. i85. 75 cts. 

Is it that this book was made because the times demanded it, or that the 
publication of a book which made the teaching of Civil Government practi- 
cable led to a general desire that it should be taught? Certain it is that this 
subject, formerly regarded as a " finishing " branch in the high school, is 
now found on every teacher's examination-paper, and is commonly taught 
in district schools. Equally certs 'n is it that in the State of New York this 
text-book is used more than all others combined. 

2. A Chart of CivV Government. By Charles T. Pooler. Sheets 12x18, 
5 cts. The same folded, in cl '■> covers, 25 cts. 

Schools using Northar .V C. . il Government will find this chart of great 
use, and those not yet ready to introduce u text-book will be able to give no 
little valuable instruction by t'-is charts alone. Some commissioners have 
purchased them by the hundred and presented one to every school house in 
the county. 

3. Handbook for School Teachers and Trustees. A manual of School 
Law for School Officers, Teachers and Parents in the State of New York. 
By Herbert Brownell. 16mo, leatherette, pp. 84. 35 cts. 

This is a specification of the general subject, presenting clearly, defi- 
nitely, and with references, important Questions of School Law. Particular 
attention is called to the chapters treating of schools under visitation of the 
Eegents— a topic upon which definite information is oft^n sought for in vain. 

h. Common School Law for Common School Teachers. A digest of the 
provisions of statute and common law as to the relations jf the Teacher to 
the Pupil, the Parent, and the District. With 500 references to legal decis- 
ions in 28 different States. 14th edition, wholly re-written, with references 
to the new Code of 1888. By C. W. Bardeen. 16mo, cloth, pp. 120. 75 cts. 

This has been since 1875 the standard authority upon the teacher's rela- 
tions, and is frequently quoted in legal decisions. The new edition is much 
more complete than its predecessors, containing Topical Table of Contents, 
and a minute Index. 

5. Laws of New York relating to Common Sclwols, with comments and 
instructions, and a digest of decisions. 8vo, leather, pp. 867. $4.00. 

This is what is known as " The New Code of 1888," and contains all re- 
visions of the State school-law to date. x^ 

6. The Powers and Duties of Officers and Teachers. By Albert P. Mar- *• 
ble. 16mo, paper, pp. 27. 15 cts. 

A vigorous presentation in Sup't Marble's pungent style of tendencies 

as well as facts. 

7. First Principles of Political Economy. By Joseph Aldeh. 16mo, 
cloth, pp. 153. 75 cts. 

Ex-President Andrew D. White says of this book : " It is clear, well 
arranged, and the best treatise for the purpose I have ever seen." 

C. W. BARDEEN, Publisher, Syracuse, N. Y. 






UNIVERSITY AND SCHOOL EXTENSION. 



W. T. HARRIS, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



(An address delivered before the National Educational Association, at St. Paul, Minn., July, 1890.) 

Our elementary school system teaches children how to read; but it has not 
yet taught sufficiently well what to read. In view of this fact there have been 
for some time tentative efforts in the direction of an extension of the ben- 
efits of the school by conducting courses of reading at home, so that the im- 
pulse gained at school may not be lost, but continue throughout life. The 
pupil once taught how to read, shall continue his education through well- 
selected books and become learned and cultured. Inasmuch as every step 
gained is a new instrument with which to gain more, the capacity for acquire- 
ment of mental power will increase with age, and there is no limit to the 
progress in knowledge and power of thought that may be attained. 

Some years ago the great universities of England commenced a movement k 
known as " University Extension," with the express purpose of connecting 
those famous seats of learning more directly with the people. Lectures and 
courses of study have been laid out, and in numerous towns there are groups 
of students pursuing lines of reading and investigation under the direction of 
professors and fellows in the universities. 

The practical advantage of this is the hold which it gives those great insti- 
tutions upon the thoughts and opinions of all classes of people. It is a con- 
servative influence in an entirely good sense of that word. The institutions 
where the broadest and soundest views of the world are elaborated, can by 
the aid of this university-extension scheme mould the thoughts and oj)inions 
of the people. But they are to mould not by mere dogmatic, teaching of cut- 
and-dried doctrines. They will arouse and challenge investigation of grounds 
and reasons. They will teach the people how to think for themselves, and 
that too on sufficient premises. 

Here in this country, we need university extension for all the reasons that 
exist in England, and for this additional reason : we wish to draw an increas- 
ing number of youth to complete their school courses in our colleges and uni- 
versities. The extension movement will bring college professors into direct 
relations with large numbers of earnest and aspiring youth, and the result will 
be the happy one of inducing an increase of attendance on institutions of 
higher education, besides giving them far greater influence on the thinking 
and acting of the masses of the people who do not go beyond an elementary 
school course. 

The extension movement for universities in this country has recently been 
started on a substantial basis. Mr. Seth T. Stewart, of Brooklyn, aided by 
Superintendent Calkins, of New York City, has been the chief worker in the 



THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 



cause. It has added school to university extension, and proposes to continue 
.all grades of instruction in letters and science to those who leave school at 
.•any grade of progress. But I must pause here to mention a prior occupation 
«of this field of work. 

We all know and highly value the great undertaking of Dr. Vincent, ema- 
nating from Chautauqua. In itself it is a Sunday-school movement that has 
broadened into a school- and university-extension movement in all directions 
and in vast proportions. One hundred thousand people or more are pursuing 
well-planned courses of reading under the direction of the Chautauqua fac- 
ulty. If I mistake not, this enterprise of Dr. Vincent was initiated before 
the English movement of which mention has been made, but it started from 
a different quarter, the church instead of the university, though it has, by a 
process of healthy growth, arrived at the very work which the university ex- 
tension contemplates. 

I mention this Chautauquan institution in order to do it justice in this con- 
nection. No one should speak of school extension in this country without 
first paying his tribute of respect to the labors of Dr. Vincent. 

Mr. Stewart has succeeded in organizing his idea under the name of "Uni- 
versity and School-Extension Movement " ; with President Timothy Dwight, 
of Yale University, as President of the Faculty, and Presidents Seth Low, of 
Columbia, and Francis L. Patton, of Princeton, acting with him on the exec- 
utive committee. 

In order to anticipate and answer questions which will arise in the minds 
\of those hitherto unacquainted with the undertaking, I shall read the follow- 
ing extracts from the circular announcing the program for 1889-90: 

"The design of the university and school extension" is, in the words of the circu- 
lar announcing its purposes, "to supplement and to strengthen the university and 
the school system, to increase the culture and to promote the interests of teachers as 
members of a profession ; and, in general, to advance the knowledge of letters and 
of the arts and sciences. 

" The work is not, however, restricted to teachers ; it is open to all persons of the 
required age. No one can expect, through the university and school extension, to 
secure a university education ; but university graduates and others, ladies and gen- 
tlemen, will thus have an opportunity of continuing or of taking up each year some 
one or two studies under university guidance and recognition. 

"The courses in university extension will be parallel to those of the universities, 
and, within the necessary limitations, of the high grade maintained in the best uni- 
versities. The work in school extension, which will be slower in development, will 
be in the subjects taught in schools. It will also include the methods and the princi- 
ples involved in teaching the respective subjects." 

METHODS. 

"The features of the work are home study, class-work, lectures, instruction by 
correspondence, lectures by correspondence, the library, public examinations, 
prizes, and certificates — various marks of honor for work of high grade, but no 
degrees." 

"Each registered member is entitled to one of the following syllabi, and may pro- 
cure the others from the general secretary." [ There are twenty-five of these syllabi, 



UNIVERSITY AND SCHOOL EXTENSION. 



laying out courses of study, preliminary and advanced, in literature, history, psy- 
chology, political science, French, German, mathematics, astronomy, physical 
geography, geology, physics, chemistry, and philosophy of education. These are 
prepared by professors of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and by Superin- 
tendent Calkins.] 

CLASSES. 

"Any person may form a society or a class to study any one of the prescribed 
courses. A class should consist of from three to twelve students. The best talent 
available should be secured to lead or to assist in the work. The general secretary 
will assist in forming classes in New York, in Brooklyn, and in other places. A 
class can pay its registration fee and class instruction by charging its members a 
small fee. 

" The class meetings may not only be made the occasion for pleasant social and 
intellectual intercourse, but the exercise may be varied by readings, essays, and dis- 
cussions. It is suggested, that small circulating libraries for the use of a class may 
be formed by the gift or loan of one or more books by each member of the class. 

"A student who has no associates with whom to form a class should pursue his 
studies with the assistance of the correspondence courses. Registered members will, 
however, be advised as to the formation of classes." 

COBBESPONDENCE. 

"Registered members desiring to join correspondence classes should communi- 
cate with the general secretary. These classes will be formed only when a sufficient 
number of students express a desire for them. The correspondence will be under 
the personal direction of a university professor. Most of the professors in the uni- 
versity extension have consented to teach the correspondence classes, in their re- 
spective studies. 

"Correspondence classes are suggested for each of the following topics: Greek, 
Latin, French, German (the language and literature of these languages for a four or 
five years' course), English literature, psychology, political science, American and 
European history, physical geography, geology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, al- 
gebra (a two years' course), geometry, trignometry, physical training, the philosophy 
and history of education." 

LEOTUBES. 

" The class and the lecture systems, as the work is developed, will be thoroughly 
well organized. During the year 1889-90 there may be a few lectures in New York 
or Brooklyn. It is expected that members of the university and school extension 
will have the opportunity of attending, each year, short courses of lectures by uni- 
versity professors." 

LIBBAEX. 

"In most of the syllabi the professors have outlined their subjects by topics; and 
after each topic they have referred in many cases, by chapter and page, to the best 
reading on the respective topics. The student has the benefit of readings selected 
in each subject by an acknowledged expert." 

FEES. 

"The registration, or membership fee for the present year is one dollar for one 
student or a small class, and five dollars for a large class or a society. 

" Ladies 18 years of age or older and gentlemen of 20 years or older, and also classes 
and societies, may become registered members. 

"The fee for instruction by correspondence will be ten dollars for each study, but 
no correspondence class will be formed nor will the money be received until a suffi- 
cient number have expressed a desire to join the respective classes. 



4 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 

"All the lines of work, including the examinations, are entirely optional with 
members; nor will any charge be made for any part of the work unless that part is 
chosen by the member. 

" The class registration fee of five dollars entitles a class to twelve syllabi. Addi- 
tional syllabi may be had by members at twenty-five cents each, or six for a dollar. 
" Send registration fee, with address, to the undersigned. 

Seth T. Stewaet, 
General Secretary, Box 192, Brooklyn, New York." 

I have brought forward the following reflections, containing the discussion 
of this subject, in order to explain the great influence and significance which 
higher education has in the life of the individual, and in society as a whole : 

The graduate of a college or university is accustomed to celebrate two 
events of his life. He keeps a yearly feast in memory of his birth — the first 
great event of his life was his advent on this planet ; the second was his edu- 
cation at the college. He ever holds in honor and reverence the mother who 
gave him birth and subsequent nurture ; he likewise holds in honor his spir- 
itual mother — his Alma Mater, and celebrates on all fitting occasions his 
spiritual new birth or palingenesia. 

As natural beings, as animals, we live but do not know our living. Only 
as educated beings do we live a conscious life in the high sense of the word. 
Only by education do we go out beyond ourselves as mere individuals and 
enter into our heritage of the life of the race. 

The uneducated consciousness of the mere animal does not enable him to 
take up the experience of his fellow-animals and appropriate its lessons in 
the form of moral and scientific ideas. Only to a small extent does he avail 
himself of the lives of others. Only the species lives on while the individual 
metamorphosis of life and death takes place. But the animal capable of 
education can go beyond his individual experience and avail himself of the 
lives of all. For the educated there is vicarious experience. He may live 
over in himself the lives of all others as well as his own life. In fact, each 
lives for all and all live for each on the plane of educated being. On this 
plane the individual may be said to ascend into the species, and we can no 
longer say of him what we say of the mere animal — the species lives and 
the individual dies. For individual immortality belongs to the being that 
can think ideas. Because ideas embody the life experience of the race and 
make possible this vicarious life of each in all. The religious mystery of 
vicarious atonement, is, we may see, adumbrated in this the deepest fact of 
our spiritual existence. The mistakes and errors of each and every man, as 
well as his achievements and successes, all go into the common fund of ex- 
perience of the race, and are converted into ideas that govern our lives through 
education. The human race lives and dies for the individual man. All the 
observation of the facts of the universe, all thinking into the causes of those 
facts by this process, is rendered available for each man. He may reenforce 
his feeble individual might by the aggregate feeling and seeing and thinking 
of all men now living and of all that have lived. 



UNIVERSITY AND SCHOOL EXTENSION. 



No wonder that the college graduate loves to celebrate the great event of 
his life, his spiritual new birth. Not to say that all education is obtained at 
college, for civilization itself is one vast process of education, going on for 
each individual that participates in it from the cradle to the grave. But the 
college-educated man remembers his narrow intellectual horizon and the close- 
ness of his mental atmosphere in the days before his academic course of study ; 
and he remembers well the growth and transformation that began there 
through the benign influences of that "cherishing mother." He there saw. 
great men — men of lofty character, of deep learning, and of world-wide repu- 
tation. He came into contact with them in the lecture-room and at the re- 
ligious services in the chapel, and to some extent in social life. He had 
entered a sort of community, and now lived in a brotherhood of students like 
himself, forming a great family all animated by one purpose : that of mental 
or spiritual growth. The student learns not merely from books and pro- 
fessors, but from his fellow-students, learning to know himself by seeing his 
image reflected, magnified and enlarged, as it were, in the spectacle of an en- 
tire class or the entire college. Each student measures his actual realization 
' by the side of the ideal held up by his fellows, and he does much to rid him- 
self of bis eccentricities and provincialisms, his low motives, his philistinism, 
by the help of his college-mates, gaining more, perhaps, through their friendly 
jibes and sarcasm than through their advice and counsel. 

While he is shaping his conduct of life in harmony with the student ideals, 
he is at the same time undergoing a mighty change in his aspirations. Above 
his class he sees advanced classes performing with ease daily tasks in the study 
of language, mathematics and science, that seem to his undisciplined powers 
little short of miracles. The freshman looks up to the seniors as intellectual 
giants. One year of college growth causes a vast abyss of achievement and 
power to yawn between the present and the former stadium of growth. 

Perhaps the greatest lesson that we learn in college education is this knowl- 
edge of our possibilities. If one year's growth through the study of certain 
subjects, under the direction of tutors and professors, can so lift us above our- 
selves, we infer that we are in a great measure the masters of our fortune. 
Learning, or the industry that acquires it, is a sort of talisman which may 
lift us out of our "low-vaulted past," and place us on heights of directive 
power. There is a promise and potency in the study of these branches which 
are learned in the college, a promise and potency to enlighten us and produce 
in us a sort of metamorphosis out of ourselves — out of ourselves as puny in- 
dividuals, into our great self as the race. 

This is what the second great event of our lives, namely, our new birth 
from our Alma Mater, meant to us, and still means. Our first birth gave 
us life, feeling, and locomotion — gave us individuality; and all of these are 
good things. 

Our second birth gave us community with all fellow-men through thought ; 
it secured for us our heritage in the wisdom of the race. It gave us person- 



6 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 

ality in the place of mere individuality, using the word "personality" in a 
technical sense to signify a higher potency than individuality — in short, an 
individuality that combines with other individualities, namely its fellow-men, 
and reenforces its single might by the might of all. 

This glance at the high place held by college or university education piques 
us to inquire next into the make-up of the course of study. What is the 
peculiarity of this course, and in how far does it contribute to the power of 
the student ? We need not further discuss the advantages of association with 
a large body of fellow-students, all inspired with the one high purpose of 
overcoming the difficulties of comprehending human learning by means of 
industry. For even the poorest and unworthiest of students, the veriest shirk, 
is industrious, and cannot advance with his class unless he works much. Nor 
is it necessary to dwell upon the educative value of the spectacle of high 
character and deep learning that the student beholds in the college faculty, 
or of the spectacle of increased power gained by classes after one, two, or 
three years of college residence. These elements of education are obvious 
enough. But our interest concentrates on the function of the course of study 
in producing the mental emancipation of youth. What is a liberal course of 
study ? This question is a very important one for those who advocate, uni- 
versity extension. For the youth in his home far distant from the university 
may be aroused to industry on the lines of intellectual mastery. He may not 
gain the stimulus of direct personal contact and the self-knowledge that 
comes of seeing the growth of one's equals, but he may still gain what is not 
the least of the three educative results of the university — he may master the 
course of study which gives him the most insight into the world of nature 
and the world of human civilization. 

The university-extension scheme may lay out courses of study, and hold 
severe examination tests that will be sufficient to stimulate the aspiration and 
guide the labors of vast multitudes of youths and adults who have been de- 
barred from the privilege of college residence. 

At the very beginning of our inquiry we see that it will not do to suppose 
that the what one studies is indifferent, and that the mere fact of continued 
and persevering study on any lines haphazard, is all-sufficient to make a uni- 
versity education. For no amount of study on the phase of primary educa- 
tion, or even of secondary education, will ever give one a university education. 

Higher instruction differs from lower instruction chiefly in this : lower in- 
struction concerns to a greater extent the mere inventory of things and 
events, and has less to do with inquiring into the unity of those things and 
events. Higher instruction deals more with the relation of things and events. 
It investigates the dependence of one phase upon another, and it deals espe- 
cially with the practical relation of all species of knowledge to man as indi- 
vidual and as social whole. This latter kind of instruction, it is evident, is 
ethical ; and we may say, therefore, that it is a characteristic of higher educa- 
tion that it should be ethical, and build up in the mind of the student a habit 



UNIVERSITY AND SCHOOL EXTENSION. 



of thinking on the human relations of all departments of inquiry. In the 
lower instruction the ethical is taught by precept and practice. In higher edu- 
cation the mind of the student is directed towards the ethical unity that per- 
vades the worlds of man and nature as their regulative principle. The youth 
is emancipated from mere blind authority of custom and made free by insight 
into the immanent necessity of ethical principles. Hence it is evident that 
philosophical investigation must constitute a leading feature of the method 
of higher instruction. 

Not a mere inventory, not a collection or heap of mere information is de- 
manded of the university students ; not even the systematization of the facts 
and events inventoried, the mere classification and arrangement such as is 
done by secondary instruction, will suffice for the university. It demands 
profound reflection ; it insists that the pupil shall see each branch in the light 
of the whole. It directs him to the unity underlying and making possible the 
classifications and systems as well as the inventory of the details themselves. 
It seeks as its highest aim in its instruction to give insight to the mind of the 
student. 

Let us look at the idea of insight for a moment, and try to see for ourselves 
why the curriculum or course of study laid out by the university for its own 
work and for the preparatory work in the secondary school has taken the 
present form. 

The general principle which determines the character of insight-giving 
studies is this : They must be of such a kind that they lead the individual out 
of his immediate surroundings, and assimilate him with the atmosphere and 
surroundings of an early historical age of the people to which he belongs. 
Each stage of culture is a product of two factors: the activity of jjresent 
social forces, and that of the previous stage of culture. Every stage of cul- 
ture goes down into succeeding ones in human history as a silent factor, still 
exercising a determining influence upon them, but in an ever-weakening de- 
gree. The education of the child first proceeds to take him out of himself 
and bathe him in the rare atmosphere of the childhood of his race. Even 
the nursery tales that greet his dawning consciousness, and later the fairy 
stories and mythological fiction that delight his youth, are simply the trans- 
figured history of the deeds of his race. With the education of the school 
begins a serious assimilation of the classics of his people, wherein he becomes 
by degrees conscious of the elements of his complex being. He finds one 
after another the threads that compose his civilization — threads that weave 
the tissue of his own nature as a product of civilization. The Chinese child 
reads Confucius and Mencius and sees the universal type and model on which 
the Chinese every-day world is formed. The Hindoo child listens to the stories 
of the Hitopadesa, and learns the Vedas and Puranas, and becomes conscious 
of the ideal principles of his caste-system. The Tvirk reads his Koran and 
learns to recognize the ordinances which direct and control his relations to 
his fellow-men and to himself. 



8 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 

Pursuing a similar course, and necessarily limited in its choice of the subject- 
matter of elementary education, our own school takes the pupils to Greece 
and Rome through the two dead languages, Latin and Greek ; for the evolu- 
tion of the civilization in which we live and move and have our being, issued 
through Greece and Rome on its way to us. Each one of our institutions 
traces its genesis in the necessities that arose in the histories of those people. 
The organism of the state, the invention of the forms in which man may live 
in a civil community and enjoy municipal and personal rights— these trace 
their descent in a direct line from Rome, and were indigenous to the people 
that spoke Latin. In our civil and political forms we live Roman life to-day. 
Even the vocabulary of the portion of our language that expresses these phases 
of our civilization, is of Latin derivation. To ferret out and make clear to 
ourselves this part of our being is to assimilate the Roman civilization. As 
the pupil penetrates the atmosphere of Rome, gradually becoming familiar 
from day to day with the modes of expression- — the thinking and feeling of 
the Romans — he unconsciously ascends to one of his own fountains, and ac- 
quires a certain faculty of clear thinking and seeing in regard to his political 
and social existence. He acquires the power of insight into his surrounding 
conditions. Similarly with other phases, our scientific and aesthetic forms come 
from beyond Rome ; they speak the language of their Greek home to this very 
day, just as much as Jurisprudence and Legislation pronounce their edicts in 
Roman words. Religion points to Rome as the radiating center of Christen- 
dom. 

This insight of which we speak cannot be obtained except through study, 
exactly equivalent to the Latin and Greek studies which are required in our 
higher schools. 

To assimilate the antecedent stage of our civilized existence, we must come 
into immediate contact with it — such contact as we find by learning the lan- 
guage of the ancient people who founded it. Language is the clothing of the 
inmost spiritual self of a people, and we must don the garb in which they 
thought and spoke, in order to fully realize in ourselves these embryonic stages 
of our civilization. What we have lived through we know adequately ; and 
when we have lived over Roman life in our dispositions and feelings, and then 
realized the forms of its imagination as it embodied them in its art and poetry, 
and finally have seized it in the abstract conceptions of the intellect, and 
grasped its highest syntheses in the ideas of reason — then we know it, and we 
know ourselves in so far as we embody it in our institutions. 

The present spirit and methods of scientific investigation bear me witness 
that to know an individual we must study it in its history. It is a part of a 
process ; we need to find its presuppositions in order to make it intelligible. 
Only in the perspective of its history can we see it so as to comprehend it as 
a whole. 

If a man is not educated up to a consciousness of what he presupposes ; if 
he does not learn the wide-reaching relations that go out from him on all sides, 



UNIVEBSITY AND SCHOOL EXTENSION. 



linking him to the system of nature and to the vast complex of human history 
and society, he does not know himself, and is in so far a mere animal. Such 
existence as we live unconsciously, is to us a fate, and not an element of free- 
dom. 

When the scholar learns his presuppositions, and sees the evolution afar off 
of the elements that have come down to him and entered his being — elements 
that form his life and make the conditions which surround him and furnish 
the instrumentalities which he must wield, then he begins to know how much 
his being involves ; and in the consciousness of this, he begins to be somebody 
in real earnest. He begins to find himself. His empty consciousness fills 
with substance. He recognizes his personal wealth in the possession of the 
world and the patrimony of the race. 

Now this essential function of education to culture man into consciousness 
of his spiritual patrimony, to give him an insight into the civilization whose 
vital air he breathes, is attempted in our higher schools and colleges. There 
are many other threads to this education — notably those of mathematics and 
natural science. But the pith and core of a culture that emancipates us is 
classic study. 

Measuring our fellow-men by power of intellect, we rank those the highest 
who can withdraw themselves out of their finitude and littleness, out of their 
feelings- and prejudices, up into the region of the pure intellect, the region of 
unbiased judgment, so as to survey a subject in all its bearings. The thinker 
must be able to penetrate purely into the atmosphere of a subject until he feels 
it throughout, and his vision and sentiments are no longer merely his own 
personal impressions, but he feels and thinks his subject in its entire compass, 
and comprehends it. 

This power of self-alienation hinges on the power to withdraw out of one's 
own immediateness into his generic existence — to withdraw to a standpoint 
whence he can see all his presuppositions, the complex of his surroundings, 
and take them into account. This power is attained through classical culture. 
The measure of this power of self-alienation is the measure of the mental 
power of man. "We all call the man who cannot withdraw from the narrow 
circle of his every-day feelings and ideas a weak man, and say that he pos- 
sesses no insight. 

Our colleges and universities, in order to make this self-alienation more 
complete, have generally preserved a semi-monastic character in their organi- 
zation. Their pupils are, for the most part, isolated from their families, and 
live in an artificial society of their own. The student life (wherein the family 
and civil society that have in modern times unfolded into independent and 
complex systems, are united into a sort of monastic institution through a 
dormitory system, and the organization of classes and and secret societies and 
the like) is a sort of embryonic civilization, and creates an atmosphere that 
reminds the historical student of the prevailing state of society in early ages. 

In the university-extension scheme it is evident that we cannot have these 



10 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 

accessories of self-estrangement ; the Greek-letter societies, the caps and gowns, 
the semi-monastic life of the college dormitory ; but what is more essential, 
we can have the training in the classic languages — a sufficient amount of 
such training to give each person an insight into his spiritual embryology. 

It must be admitted that the function of the university in our day is not 
precisely the same as that of its infancy. The art of printing has produced 
the change. The advent of the daily newspaper is perhaps the most signifi- 
cant circumstance of the present century. Its influence is as potent to change 
our educational systems, as the discovery of printing itself was in the fifteenth 
century. 

Before the invention of printing, information could not be circulated except 
orally, and except in a very limited degree. A very wealthy man could af- 
ford to buy only a dozen books ; the man in moderate circumstances and the 
poor man could not own any unless he made them himself. At the univer- 
sity one could hear the most valuable books read by the bachelors of arts — 
slowly and distinctly, so that each student could write for himself a copy of 
what he wished to preserve. Collecting in groups, the enthusiastic learners 
could discuss the contents and meaning of the writings, and these discussions 
did most for the quickening of the intellects of the students at the old uni- 
versities. Their minds being prepared by these dialectic exercises, they would 
come to the lectures of the masters with keen appetites for their expositions 
and explanations. Such intellectual feasts as were spread at the universities 
— no wonder that they attracted immense crowds of eager, awakened men. 
The lectures on Law at Bologna, drew 20,000 students to that university. 
Thirty thousand flocked to Paris five hundred years ago— by 7,000 a greater 
number than attended the twenty-six academies of the university system of 
all France in 1881. Oxford University attracted as many people in the time 
of Roger Bacon, as the twenty-five largest German universities together as- 
semble to-day. 

But we must remember that there were no test examinations in those days. 
Probably the greater part of those called masters could not pass the examina- 
tion for matriculation, were they to present themselves now at Harvard or 
Yale, Johns Hopkins or Columbia. However this may be, it is certain that 
there were some very great scholars in the subjects which they professed to 
study. Their learning was limited to essential works of genius, and many of 
them knew thoroughly the entire works of Aristotle and Plato. 

After the invention of printing the attendance on universities diminished. 
Oxford had 15,000 about the year 1400; 5,000 in 1500, and only 2,600 in 
1880. 

The university revived learning ; the jDrinted book makes learning accessi- 
ble to the many, and finally, when it' gets translated out of Latin into the lan- 
guage of each people, the book makes the wisdom of the race accessible to all. 
While knowledge was preserved only in manuscripts, and distributed orally 
at the university, it was necessary that there should be a common sj)eech at 



UNIVEBSITY AND SCHOOL EXTENSION. 11 

the university — a learned language that all could understand, whatever his 
native dialect, and in which every scholar should write his discoveries. 

The Latin language contained all the wit and wisdom extant at that time. 
But while it proved a great advantage to the scholar, it prevented the com- 
mon people who knew no Latin from reading the books which had begun to 
abound in the community. The translation made of the Bible opened up the 
greatest world treasury to all who could read their native tongue, and led 
the way to further books in the mother-tongue of each of the northern nations 
of Europe. 

The invention of the art of printing changed the function of the higher 
schools of Europe ; it did not destroy them, or render them superfluous. Ex- 
aminations came into vogue, and classification and grading were perfected. 
The course of study became more and more disciplinary, and mere informa- 
tion studies were allowed subordinate places. 

It is supposed that the study of the classics, Latin and Greek, is retained 
in our system of higher education because of a blind conservatism which 
continues the good old way, after all reasons for its existence have vanished. 
I think that this is a serious mistake. 

It is true that the necessity of a common language as the medium of in- 
struction justified the use of Latin at the university of the middle ages. 
Now, however, it is to be justified on the ground of embryology, as I have 
already indicated. We study Latin, not because it is the most perfect, or the 
most flexible, or the most anything — but because it is the expression of that 
jDhase of civilization that enters our own as the most important determining 
factor, giving us the forms of our institutions and our laws, our methods 
of science and our literary forms. That Greek is the primitive expression of 
that nation which gave us the forms of art and science, is a sufficient reason 
why we are required to study it for a time, in order to understand that strand 
in our civilization. 

The university (and in this paper I have used the word university as sy- 
nonymous with college, notwithstanding their original difference of meaning, 
for I notice that the program of the university-extension movement does not 
include theology, medicine, and jurisprudence in its curriculum, but limits 
itself thus far to the academic or college course in the arts) — -the university, 
I say, in our time, has most need of extension. In the age of the newspaper 
and the universal common school, people all receive primary education, and 
very many go on, in adult years, to acquire secondary education ; very few, 
however, of the merely "self-educated" now get what may be called a higher 
education. There is a lack of philosophic insight — of that insight which sees 
the true moving principle of things. Consequently we have as the highest 
product of the self-educated multitude mere iconoclasm — mere negative ac- 
tivity, and but little constructive effort. The university extension will, when 
it is fairly inaugurated, give better occupation to this negative phase of cult- 
ure, by directing it to the study of the origin of institutions, and to the more 
humanizing work of interpreting literature, art, and history. 



12 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 

With the multiplication of public high schools, there has come about in 
this country a tendency to neglect the college or university. Secondary in- 
struction seems to many of our leaders in education to be more practical than 
higher education. But, if my opinion is well founded, this claim for second- 
ary instruction must be held to be an error. The most practical of all in- 
struction is that which finds the unity of all branches of knowledge, and 
teaches their human application. Ethics is certainly the most practical of 
all branches of human learning. 

All friends of a sounder education will therefore bid God-speed to this 
movement for university extension, and all will hope that through it the uni- 
versity standards of thinking and investigating will become known as ideals, 
and that once well established it will have the effect of increasing the percent- 
age of youth who complete their education in the university itself. 



THE SCHOOL BULLETIN PUBLICATIONS.- 



Helps in Eeading and Speaking. 

1. The Sentence Method of Teaching Eeading. By Geo. L. Farnham. 
Cloth, 16mo, pp. 50. Price 50 cts. 

As the word method was a step above the alphabet method, so the sen- 
tence method is a step beyond the word method. " The unit of thought is 
the sentence," and if the child considers the words as units in learning to 
read, he must unlearn his habits of reading in order to read naturally. Mr. 
Farnham shows how much more easily children will learn to read, and how 
much better they will read, where this method is employed. The book is in 
general use all over the country— in Col. Parker's Cook County Normal 
School, among others. It is especially valuable for teacher's institutes. 

2. A Practical Delsarte Primer. By Mrs. Anna Randall-Diehl. lCmo, 
pp. 66, 50 cts. 

This is a remarkable compact and forcible presentation of a system of 
elocution now so widely known and employed that no teacher ot reading 
can afford to be ignorant of it. Mrs. Pandall-Ciehl is among the most emi- 
nent teachers in the land, and she has given here precisely the methods she 
herself employed. It contains a series of twelve charts which present the 
principles of the system so clearly that they cannot fail to be understood. 

S. A Manual of Elocution. By John Swett. Cloth, 12mo, pp. 300. 
Price $1.50. 

h. Memory Gems. By Geo. H. Hoss. Paper, 16mo, pp. 40. Price 15 cts. 

5. Memory Selections. By Charles Northend. 24 manilla cards in a 
box. Three series, Primary, Intermediate, Advanced. Price of each, 95 cts. 

6. The Table is Set. A Comedy for Schools, from the German by Ben- 

dix. By Welland Hendrick. 16mo, pp. 30. Price 15 cts. 

Nothing is in greater demand than little plays for school entertain- 
ments, with few characters and requiring no scenery, and yet thoroughly 
bright and entertaining. This play will be found to meet all requirements. 

7. Calisthenics and Disciplinary Exercises. By E. V. DeGraff. Manilla, 
16mo, pp, 39. 25 cts. 

8. Home Exercise for Health and Cure. With 45 Illustrations. Trans- 
lated from the German of D. G. R. Schreber, by Charles Russell Bardeen. 
Cloth, 16mo, pp. 91, 50 cts. 

A glance over the table of contents of this little book will show how 
widely it differs from the usual gymnastic exercises prepared for schools, in 
which the main object is to provide uniform and graceful movements that 
will look well in concert. Such movements are here given, as selected in 
the table on page 87, but the purpose of the book reaches far beyond them. 
It is especially a treatise for individual use,— a book to be kept on the dress- 
ing-table and followed every morning and evening, like a physician's pre- 
scription. Indeed, that is just what the book is, and in the original the com- 
binations in Part III. are called "prescriptions " (Vorschrifte). 

In Germany 140.000 copies of the book had been sold up to 1889, and 
teachers are expected to be familiar with it, both for their own use and for 
that of their pupils. This translation, which purposely follows the original 
very closely, puts into the hands of American teachers the best treatise on 
bodily exercise now extant, and gives directions that will impart to many a 
strength and energy they had ceased to hope for. 

C. W. BARDEEN, Publisher, Syracuse, N. Y. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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•THE SCHOOL BULLETIN PUBLICATIONS, 



.Helps toward Correct Speech. 

!• Verbal Pitfalls ; a manual of 1500 words commonly misused, includ- 
ing all those the use of which in any sense has been questioned by Dean 
APvord, G. W. Moon, Fitzedward Hall, Archbishop Trench, Wm. C. Hodg- 
son, W. L. Blackley, G. F. Graham, Richard Grant White, M. Scheie de Vere, 
W m. Mathews, ' ' Alfred Ayres, " and many others. Arranged alphabetically, 
with 3000 references and quotations, and the ruling of the dictionaries. 
By C. W. Baedeen. 16mo, cloth, pp. .223. 75 cts. 

Perhaps the happiest feature of the book is its interesting form. Some 
hundreds of anecdotes have been gathered to illustrate the various points 
made. These have the advantage not only of making the work entertain- 
ing, but of fixing the point in the mind as a mere precept could not do. The 
type indicates at a glance whether the use of a word is (1) indefensible, (2) 
defensible but objectionable, or (3) thoroughly authorized. 

2. A System of Rhetoric. By C. W. Babdeen. 12mo, half leather, pp. 
813. $1.75. ' vy 

3. A Shorter Course in Blietoric. By C. W. Babdeen. 12mo, half leather, 
pp. 311. $1.00. 

._4. Outlines of Sentence Making. By C. W. Babdeen. 12mo, cloth, pp. 
187- 76 cts. 

5. Practical P/wnics. A comprehensive study of Pronunciation, form- 
ing a complete guide to the study of elementary sounds of the English Lan- 
guage, and containing 3,000 words of difficult pronunciation, with diacriti- 
cal marks according to Webster's Dictionary. By E. V. De Graff. 16mo 
cloth, pp. 108. 75 cts. 

The book before us is the latest, and in many respects the best, of the 
manuals prepared for this purpose. The directions for teaching elementary 
sounds are remarkably explicit and simple, and the diacritical marks are 
fuller than in any other book we know of, the obscure vowels being marked, 
as well as the accented ones. This manual is not like others of the kind, a 
simple reference book. It is meant for careful study and drill, and is es- 
pecially adapted to class use.— New England Journal of Education. 

6. Pocket Pronunciation Book, containing the 3,000 weirds of difficult 
pronunciation, with diacritical marks according to Webster's Dictionary. 
By E. V. De Gkaff. 16mo, manilla, pp. 47. 15 cts. 

Every vowel that can possibly be mispronounced is guarded by danger 
signals which send one back to the phonic chart for instructions. We are 
glad to notice that the Professor is leading a campaign against the despoil- 
ers of the vowel u ; hs cannot hold communion with an educated man whose 
third day in the week is "Toosday."— Northern Christian Advocate. 

7. Studies in Articulation ; a study and drill-book in the Alphabetic Ele- 
ments of the English language. Fifth thousand. By J. H. Hoose. 16mo, 
cloth, pp. 70. 50 . 3ts. 

This work not only analyzes each sound in the language, but gives as 
illustration s hundreds of words commonly mispronounced. 

Dr. Hoose 's " Studies in Articulation " is the most useful manual of the 
kind that I know of. It should be a text-book in every Teachers' Institute 
—A. J. Bickoff, formerly Sup't of Schools at Cleveland and at Yonkers. 

8. Eints on Teaching Orthoepy. By Chas. T. Pooler. 16mo, paper, pp. 
15. 10 cts. ^ 

9. Question Book of Orthography, Orthoepy, and Etymology, with Notes, 
Queries, etc. By Albert P. Sodthwick. 16mo, paper, pp. 40, 10 cts. 

10. Question Book of Beading and Punctuation, with Notes, Queries, etc 
By Albert P. Southwick. 16mo, paper, pp. 38. 10 cts. 

" C. W. BARDEEN, Publisher, Syracuse, N. Y. 



